‘Tomorrowland’: Brad Bird project gets a title, remains mysterious

Jan. 28, 2013 | 2:43 p.m.

Brad Bird’s mysterious “1952” box. (Twitter)

Last week, filmmaker Brad Bird sent genre fans into a frenzy of speculation with a simple tweet showing the contents of a box that was supposedly discovered in the Walt Disney Co. archives along with the cryptic message, “The Box… opened.”

The box, of course, was just a little something whipped up by screenwriter Damon Lindelof for his upcoming super top secret Disney project “1952,” which is set to be directed by Bird and star George Clooney.

Today, that super secret project gets a title: “Tomorrowland.”

The film is set to open Dec. 19, 2014. Bird is producing and directing the project, which was written by Bird and Lindelof from a concept by Lindelof and Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen.

What’s the movie about? Well, that’s anyone’s guess.

The photo Bird tweeted offered some possible clues for fans to ruminate over: Marked simply “1952,” the box contained what appear to be photographs of Walt Disney himself, circa the 1950s, posing with a woman in one shot and a military man in uniform in another.

Other items on display appear to include a box of Technicolor film, a vinyl record in a paper sleeve, an unidentified piece of metal equipment, the book “Model Research,” author Alex Roland’s history of NASA from 1915 to 1958, and a copy of “Amazing Stories” magazine from 1928.

The issue of “Amazing Stories” is notable for containing one of the first stories by Philip Francis Nowlan about the World War I veteran cast into a state of suspended animation for more than 400 years, known popularly as Buck Rogers.

Is “Tomorrowland″ a Buck Rogers film? A story about the creation of Disneyland? None of the above?

Such guessing games are old hat to fans of “Lost,” who went scrambling to find the obscure 1967 Irish novel “The Third Policeman” by Flann O’Brien after it was featured in the background of an episode in the show’s second season. It was placed in the series by show runners Lindelof and Carlton Cuse as a nod to one of their many inspirations.